For over a decade, Google rewarded rankings with visits, so SEO practitioners learned to justify success with rankings, clicks, and traffic. For a long time, that proxy worked. But in B2B, it was always fragile—and now it’s collapsing. Zero-click searches siphon visits, SERP features crowd out listings, and generative engines influence early discovery with answer-first […]

The shift away from fully keyword-targeted search campaigns has been building for years – but this week, it reached a tipping point. Two account managers on my team, each handling different clients in different industries, came to me with the same uneasy admission.  They were leaning toward dropping some of their keyword search campaigns in […]

Google is launching a suite of updates across Ad Manager, AdSense, and AdMob to help publishers save time, strengthen advertiser relationships, and better monetize content — with major additions powered by AI and real-time technology. AI-driven automation: Smarter brand safety: A new AI tool learns a publisher’s specific brand standards and will soon automatically block […]

Twenty-five years ago, Google launched a modest advertising product that would evolve into one of the most influential tools in digital marketing. Back then, it was called Google AdWords; today, it is Google Ads. Over that quarter-century, the platform has transformed in format, scope, and ambition. While the technology behind Google Ads has evolved dramatically, […]

As SEO grows more collaborative and data-driven, more teams are operating remotely – sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity. But managing SEO remotely brings its own challenges.  Drawing on eight years of leading fully remote SEO teams, here are 10 key aspects of your workflow, setup, and strategy to get right for long-term success. 1. […]

Google’s Preferred Sources tool is meant to let fans of certain websites tell Google they want to see more of their favorite sites in the Top News feature. However, Google is surfacing copycat spam sites, random sites, and parked domains. Some of the sites appearing in the tool are so low quality that only their […]

Google is rolling out two key updates to Performance Max (PMax) campaigns — adding Waze ad inventory for store goal campaigns and introducing channel performance reporting for greater visbility. Why we care. Advertisers using PMax for store goals in the U.S. can now reach drivers directly on Waze through “Promoted Places in Navigation” pins — […]

Google warned against relying on tool-generated scores for technical SEO audits. Search Relations team member Martin Splitt outlined a three-step framework in a Search Central Lightning Talk that emphasizes site-specific context over standardized metrics. The Three-Step Framework Splitt outlined the core objective in the video: “A technical audit, in my opinion, should make sure no […]

PPC automation is now the standard in 2026. We’ve evolved from simple automated rules to Smart Bidding, scripts, budget pacing, and now AI-driven creative.  The systems running our campaigns are, for the most part, surprisingly capable – even if it pains us to admit it. With that progress, the role of the PPC expert has […]

The idea of starting an article series about AI in a time when so many articles are being at least partially generated by AI and potentially primarily consumed by AI might cause one to pause and consider the value of the effort.  All of us digital marketers hope to find a future where we can […]